Isn't TOR kind of shady? Like, mixing your traffic in with a bunch of malicious and potentially actually illegal with good reason traffic?
this post was submitted on 23 Nov 2024
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TOR itself isn't shady, but it is used by a lot of people wanting to obfuscate various things. I would say that despite its ability to visit .onion website (which are the tip of the iceberg for finding the dark side of the Internet), TOR itself is a positive thing because it allows for that obfuscation.
I think the most important one is for political journalists and domestic violence victims, both of whom may have reason to keep something private. The way TOR functions, sort of reminds me of the early telephone operators.
Anyway, my last interesting bit about why I like TOR is that it is used on the Amnesiac Operating System called Tails which can be installed and ran from just a USB drive, and the drive itself plugged into any regular computer is just seen as a standard USB. Since it's amnesiac, the only data on the computer is in RAM and if you pull the USB out the OS shuts down. It can be set up to store data though, for example files or websites. So between this OS and TOR, one could theoretically avoid tracking software set up on a computer from an abuser.
Also there's just a lot of people that like weird niche things. Over 2 million people in Germany use it and it's got a bit over half a million in the U.S.. I imagine a fair portion of that is people selling darknet services of some variety, but I would be surprised if it was even 50/50
Beehaw has not been under active attack, but we do have mitigations in place for suspicious users, based on activity which includes being on a VPN or TOR network.
Um, why would you log in over TOR? I thought the whole point of TOR was to be anonymous?
I am anonymous. Only doxxing experts know who is behind my account. Using clearnet makes it trivially simple for doxxers. Activitypub msgs include the IP address of the sending source which anyone with their own instance can see, IIRC.
But note as well Tor offers more than anonymity. It mitigates tracking by your ISP.
ISP tracking as far as I'm aware can only see the sites you go to, not any of the content etc. As long as they use TLS etc.
I suppose for some seeing the sites you go to is bad enough though. Personally, I'd use a privacy-centered VPN if I was that concerned rather than TOR since TOR feels less like I should log in with it, but I get what works for me won't work for everyone.
Indeed the ISP can only see where you go when using TLS, and that data can be aggregated to who you are along with everywhere else you go. It’s sensitive enough that in the US lawmakers decided on whether ISPs need consent to collect that info. Obama signed into force a requirement of ISPs to get consent. Then Trump reversed that. Biden did not reverse it back AFAIK.
W.r.t VPNs, you merely shift the surveillance point; you do not avoid the surveillance. The VPN provider can grab all that info just as well.
Privacy focused VPNs usually have tech to mitigate that like forgetting as soon as they have gone through the server for example, but I get that can be undone.
It’s worse than being reversible. The problem is that it’s unprovable. A switch from “zero logging” to “log everything” is wholly undetectible to users. You have to rely on blind faith that a profit-driven entity will act in your interest and resist their opportunity to profit from data collection. All you have is trust. Tor avoids that whole dicey mess and reliance on trust.
Oh, if beehaw doesn't make you sign up with an email account I suppose that makes sense, I forget if it made me, it was long ago.
Yes, I'm aware there are email anonymisation services, but likely there's still a list on those sites of what is for who. Unless you used a sign up and forget account, I suppose.
Anyway, I hope your problem gets solved 🙂